A variety of work piece holders are known in the prior art. Generally, these prior art work piece holders involve holding a work piece about an axis of rotation to present the work piece for a specific machine operation such as, for example, milling, polishing, truing, turning, etc.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,726,576 to Siniko teaches a work piece supporting the device which is manually operated to allow the user to adjust the position and/or orientation of a selected work piece. The device is affixed to a bench and defines a vertical pivot axis for a support serving to mount a chuck carrier for rotation about a first horizontal axis. The chuck in the carrier can support a work holder so as to allow for angular movement of the work holder about a second horizontal axis extending at right angles to the first horizontal axis.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,501,123 to Swann et al teaches an indexing apparatus that can be used to index a variety of different articles about an axis. In such manner, an article can be selectively rotated about the axis so that the article may be positioned in a predetermined angular position.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,562,277 to Swann et al teaches a modular vice-like work holding system utilizing dissimilar support members, each adapted to interchangeably support at least one vice-like clamping assembly in a plurality of work holding orientations relative to a support member.
The patents cited above all relate to a manually operated type of clamping mechanism used to securely hold parts presented for a machining operation such as, for example, a computer numerically controlled apparatus. Typically, these clamping mechanisms allow access by the CNC machine to the work piece at one specific angle and also one specific portion or surface of the work piece. The prior art fails to teach a work piece holder which can be automatically operated to represent a single work piece at multiple positions such that work can be performed by a robot on multiple surfaces of the work piece without manual intervention.